Policies and Perspectives Lone Motherhood Canada.pdf

Canada is a highly liberal and socially progressive country.  Canada’s sense of nationalism is based on a political foundation of liberalism and social liberalism -the idea that each citizen must have the right to liberty, equality and social justice and thus a strong social democratic ideology has remained.

Canada shows how considerable it is by naming unwed mothers as “lone mothers.”  The term “lone mothers” is indicating that they “tries” to be gender equality and not stigmatize mothers.

The term “lone mothers” reflects that their democratic policy and concern about the mothers.

Canada provides various services to the lone mothers, i.e. social service, financial support, and health care.  The government guarantees basic needs for lone mothers.  In the case of housing, Canada doesn’t have a particular policy for unwed mothers.  It aids low income families in general.  It provide subsidy to the low income families if they pay more than a certain percentage of income for rent a house.

However, they still have to figure out how to provide services to “lone mothers” at the same time encourage them to be independent by themselves.  Most of lone mother families are low income.

They hardly overcome the so called “welfare wall”.  They are entrapped in social welfare system because of inadequate child care system.

But still Canada’s liberal and democratic philosophy and policy might be a great sample for Koreans to see the issue of Korean unwed mothers. 

** For the complete writing, please check out the attached PDF

This presentation was done at a seminar of "Human Rights for Unmarried Single Mom and Out-of Wedlock Child - Korea, America, Canada, Denmark case study-" in Jeju Island.